Devoted to Destruction
Galatians 1:6-9
Introduction
The New Testament speaks of two general categories of people whom God devoted to destruction. The first category is “anyone [who] does not love the Lord.” The second is false teachers, who in Galatians 1:8-9 Paul twice calls accursed. Jesus Christ himself warned His disciples that “false Christ’s’ and false prophets will arise and will show great signs and wonders, so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect.”
In the life of the churches, Paul feared nothing so much as false doctrine, since it is the underlying source of ungodly behavior. His deep concern for the spiritual welfare of the Corinthians believers would be fully as concerning for the church today. The reason for letter to the church of Galatia was made very clear from the get go. Paul had an extreme concern and perplexity about the false teachers who were undercutting the gospel of grace he had so carefully preached and expounded while he ministered in Galatia. He was deeply grieved that the truth of God’s sovereign and gracious offer of redemption through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ alone was being corrupted by the teachings of salvation by works, namely, that a Gentile had to become a Jew surgically and ceremonially before he could become a Christian and that all Christians had to obey and honor the Jewish law and traditions in order to obtain and maintain righteousness from the Lord.
Here in our text today, the apostle Paul gives us three features involved n his strong opposition to that grave and damning heresy: his wonder, his wisdom, and his warning. Let’s consider those as we take a look at those devoted to destruction.
Read Text
I. Paul’s Wonder about the Galatians’ Defection (v. 6)
• Paul could hardly comprehend that the Galatian believers were already abandoning his teaching.
o He was amazed and bewildered.
o He could no fathom why they were so quickly deserting God, who called them by means of the grace of Christ.
o He was not surprised by what the false teachers were doing but was shocked by the favorable response they received from Christians in Galatia.
• The apostle was especially surprised that the defection had come so quickly after him being with them.
o The believers apparently offered little and ineffective resistance to the false teachers and therefore were inconsistent in their allegiance to Paul and his teaching.
o They quickly and easily came under the influence of sacrilegious doctrines.
• The Galatians had been privileged to be taught by the great teacher the church has ever known apart from the Lord Himself; yet they readily rejected the truths of grace they had learned from him.
o There is still a great and urgent need for preaching and teaching that continually repeats the central truths of the gospel.
o It is possible even for longtime believers to lose a firm grip on those truths and allow themselves to be weakened and altered by ideas that purportedly improve on the pure and plain teachings of Scripture.
• These Galatians were true believers who had come to salvation in the power of the Holy Spirit.
o They were Christian brothers who had become seriously confused.
• The Galatian Christians not only were being confused and weakened in their confidence to live by grace but were actually deserting.
o These believers were in the process of removing themselves from the sphere of grace.
o The false teachers were accountable for their corruption of God’s truth, but the Galatian Christians were also accountable for being so easily misled by it to pursue legalism.
• To desert the gospel of grace that has been taught, was not simply to desert a doctrine, but to desert God, the God that called them to salvation.
• The only gospel of God is the gospel of grace, which is the gospel of divine redemption totally apart from any work or merit of man.
o We live in grace from the moment of salvation, and if grace ever stopped, we would lose our undeserved salvation and perish in sin.
o The grace of Christ is God’s free and sovereign act of love and mercy in granting salvation through the death and resurrection of Jesus, apart from anything men are or can do, and of God’s sustaining that salvation of glorification.
• The most destructive dangers to the church have never been atheism; pagan religions; or cults that openly deny Scripture, but rather supposedly Christian movements that accept so much biblical truth that their unscriptural doctrines seem relatively insignificant and harmless.
o We need to remember though, that just a single drop of poison in a large container can make all the water lethal and deadly.
o And a single false idea that in any way undercuts God’s grace poisons the whole system of belief.
• Just like Paul we cannot tolerate a single drop of legalism being intermixed with God’s pure grace.
o For us to turn away from any part of the grace of Christ is to turn away from the power of God.
II. Paul’s Wisdom Regarding the False Teachers’ Deception (v. 7)
• The false teachers’ in the church of Galatia were presumed to be teaching from the gospel, but Paul declares that theirs is a different gospel.
• There is only one message of good news, the gospel of salvation by God’s sovereign grace working through man’s faith.
• Any message that is either more or less than that is not the good news in any sense.
• The false teachers of Paul’s day are the same breed that we see today all over.
• They have these large churches full of people, they even walk around the platform with their bible in their hands, but what comes out of their mouths is a whole different story.
• They twist and bend the gospel message that God has given to fit their lives.
• That is were the problem lies.
• They distort the gospel to the point that it attracts the young and naive Christian, because it sounds so good.
• All I have to do to go to heaven is show up to church every now and then and put some money in the offering plate.
• Alright, I can do that.
• Man, that Southern Baptist pastor down the street was to strict and close minded.
• He wanted me to believe that the only way to heaven was through Jesus Christ and stand up in front of all those members and walk to the front to surrender my all to God.
• I’ll just stay at this church, were my feeling and feet won’t get stepped on.
• Although they were oblivious to it, the churches of Galatia were being shaken to their very foundation by the false teaching of the unregenerate false teachers, who were consenting to the basic truths of Jesus Christ but who were spiritually disturbing and subverting the believers by adding works to grace.
• Which is to utterly distort the gospel of Christ.
• Whenever the gospel is distorted the church will become unsettled.
• To change the message of grace is to stifle and eventually asphyxiate the church.
• Paul wrote to Titus in Titus 1:10-11, “For there are many rebellious men, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision, who must be silenced because they are upsetting whole families, teaching things they should not teach.”
• The greatest enemies of the church are not those who openly contradict the Bible and denounce Christ but those children of Satan who, proposing to speak in God’s name, cleverly undermine and distort His true gospel with a system of works righteousness.
III. Paul’s Warning of God’s Destruction (vv. 8-9)
• The false teachers who were misleading the Galatian churches probably had impressive credentials and may have been among those who claimed to be from the Jerusalem church and to be authorized by James, the leader of that church.
• In addition to proclaiming their modified form of the gospel, which Paul declared to be no gospel at all, they sought to undermine Paul’s authority and teaching in every way they could.
• Any teaching that adds to or takes away from God’s revealed truth is a distortion of the gospel and perverts the nature and the work of Christ.
• Against any and every distortion of the gospel of Christ, Paul declares, “but even though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we have preach to you, let him be accursed.”
• Many false systems of teaching are attractive because they emotionally appeal to love, brotherhood, unity, and harmony.
• Many false teachers are popular because they seem to be warm and pleasant and claim to have great love for God and for others.
• It is because distortions of the gospel by such deceptive personalities are so appealing that “Satan disguises himself as an angel of light” 2 Cor. 11:14 tells us.
• False teachers not only should not be believed or followed but should be left to God’s judgment to be accursed.
• Listen to what the apostle John said in 2 John 7:10-11 as we prepare to close, “For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist…If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house, and do not give him a greeting; for the one who gives him a greeting participates in his evil deeds.”
Closing
Friends, we need to be on alert today. False teachers are all around us and we need to make sure that we are firmly planted in the foundation of God’s gospel of grace.
